Carlos Díaz Güell | Without doubt he has been thinking about it for many years, but the chairman of Repsol has waited patiently to show himself in the best light and make friends a few days ahead of today’s OPEC meeting taking place in Vienna, against a backdrop of highly volatile oil prices.
For once, BBVA chairman’s words have been a kind of premonition. Last week, when he said rather desperately that “negative interest rates are killing us,” he was not referring to Popular. But the fact remains that a few days later, the bank with Angel Ron at the helm announced a capital hike for 2.5 billion euros, slightly less than half of its stock market value. The aim of the operation is to offset the impact of future regulatory requirements and the shortfall related to the “floor clauses,” calculated at nearly 4.7 billion euros.
For some months now, social security contributions have been insufficient to pay for pensions, and it doesn’t look like the recovery in the economic cycle will correct the problem. Faced with a problem of these dimensions, the political parties have come up with various alternatives.
The European Commission did not want to meddle with Spain’s general elections on June 26th and has postponed until July its decision regarding a sanction for the country’s non-compliance with its deficit target. But none of the European community experts have ventured to confirm that this sanction will finally be imposed.
Nearly 5 months of 2016 have passed and, after flirting with the 10,000 level, the Ibex 35 index closed at 8,700 last week, accumulating a 9% drop over the year so far. This shows that the stock market has become the most reliable expression of the lack of confidence in the world of money, although confidence is a concept which is too intangible and a mix of factors which are often not very solid.
According to information from different sources, Renfe, Adif and Ineco have estimated losses of 1 billion euros as a result of important mistakes in the calculation of travellers made at the beginning of the project.
Isolux is a Spanish midcap which operates in the construction business and in the maintenance of large infrastructures in over 40 countries. It has been forced to reach an agreement with its principal creditors to avoid bankruptcy.
The steel industry’s current crisis led the OECD to celebrate a summit in Brussels. The objective was to reduce capacity in the industry but, according to some sources, no agreement has been possible. China is not prepared to cut its production or its exports.
This year is the 400th anniversary of the death of both Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare. The celebration of the death of these two notable writers in their native lands demonstrates the difference between what both languages and both countries represent today. Anyway,the contribution of all Spanish-speakers to global GDP is 9.2%, according to the Cervantes Institute.
It’s been two and half years since Spain set up the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsability (AIReF) to oversee the economic targets of the different administrations and the sustainability of the country’s public finances. And now that supervisory organisation, created at Brussels’ request, can be considered as liquidated, after demonstrating its uselessness.